Clickers III (11 page)

Smiling, Tony ducked into the bathroom, straddled the toilet, and unzipped his fly. His legs and arms tingled as the circulation returned to them.

“Damn,” he muttered. “And here I thought I’d be sitting alone tonight, all drunk and maudlin. Now I get to play civilian advisor to a bunch of paramilitary occult nut jobs and see Doc Wasco again. Tell me my life ain’t working out, Vince. Too bad you ain’t here to see it, you fat fuck.”

The Elder hissed as he watched from a comfortable, secure vantage point—a hundred feet up a sheer rocky cliff that was lush with vegetation—as his soldiers ran the invading humans off the beach and into the jungle. The wet sand turned red as the slaughter reached its peak. Even from this distance, the Elder could smell the blood, borne to him on the salty sea breeze. He made a soft trilling noise as he watched the carnage below.

The humans were no match for the Dark Ones and their Clickers. They’d been unaware of the humans’ presence when they emerged from the ocean, intent on waking Great Dagon. Their occupation of this most holiest of places had been an abomination. The Elder had suggested to his brothers that they wait and watch. Were the humans going to increase in number? Was their stay temporary? Naranu wasn’t very heavily populated to begin with. The human population that lived on the island were the indigenous people who’d inhabited the island for over forty thousand years and had served as guardians and sacrifices to Dagon. These new humans, though, were like the main-landers that had slaughtered the Elder’s brothers not so long ago. Sadly, the Elder’s suggestion had been overruled. So incensed were the rest of the Dark Ones at the humans’ presence—the killing had begun almost immediately.

The Elder gnashed his teeth as he watched his brethren rend the fleeing humans. Half a dozen of them scattered into the jungle, screaming in unison as they were chased down and killed.

It didn’t matter that his soldiers would catch and slaughter each and every one of them…what mattered was that the natives had allowed these humans on the island.

That was unthinkable—and unforgivable.

They had allowed the sacred spot, the most holiest of shrines, to be desecrated.

The Elder roared. A flock of macaws took flight at the sound,

squawking in fright. The Elder began to crawl down the lush vegetation, gripping strong vines and branches as it made its descent. Once it reached the jungle floor, it would head toward the beach where it would confirm that these new humans had been slaughtered. If there were stragglers, it would send its brethren out to destroy them. But in the meantime…

…in the meantime, Dagon had to be appeased.

Before the desecration of His holy shrine was discovered.

His reptilian nostrils flared wide and his gills slapped uselessly along the side of his neck. The Elder glanced up at the moon, visible through the clouds, and calculated how long it would be until sunrise. With each passing generation, their kind became more resistant to the light, but they would still need to find shelter before the dawn. He wasn’t worried. If all went according to plan, there would be no further sunrises. Before tomorrow’s dawn, Dagon would be awake and the rains would begin. Soon, the planet would be more hospitable to their kind, and humanity would be extinct.

Half a dozen Dark Ones were gathered around a small pile of human corpses. Their gills smacked wetly together as they rummaged through the bodies. The Elder bleated once at them.
The circle must be protected!
The Dark Ones answered, then departed to carry out the Elder’s orders, scattering to different corners of the island. Their hive mind was at work now, working as one solid unit, bringing them all together. Their revenge would be fulfilled.

The Elder scanned the beach. Human corpses littered the shore. Some were decapitated, others mutilated beyond recognition, others partially devoured and little more than bubbling froths of flesh due to the Clicker’s potent venom. A few of the humans had been cut in half by the Clicker’s massive claws. As always, the Dark Ones had used the Clickers to their advantage, herding them out of the ocean and up the beach in a mass attack, in some cases using them as mounts to drive the smaller Clickers forward. The element of surprise had been even more apparent here, on Naranu, where the Dark Ones had been living in their most secret of homes, their most remote conclave. For it was here that the secret to the universe lay.

The Elder roared, calling out to his generals. Two of them were close by and they emerged from the jungle’s shadow. One carried a spear never before seen by those who inhabited the surface, dragged up from the depths of the shadow at the bottom of the world. It was a spear crafted by hands far older than those of the first Neanderthal who’d walked the earth—a weapon manufactured by a race of people that had died out long before the natives of Naranu crawled onto the sandy beaches from their makeshift rafts that had carried them here from other neighboring Micronesian Islands.

As the two Dark Ones approached, the first of the island natives appeared on the beach. The Dark Ones turned around and faced them, growing silent as more natives emerged on the beach.

The roaring and screeching of the Dark Ones and Clickers that had chased the last of the new humans into the jungle were growing farther away. Far off in the distance, a tree fell over with a loud crash. Entire groves of vegetation steamed and hissed as they were decimated. There was what sounded like a building being destroyed. The Elder smiled at the sound. It was good. Such structures were a blight upon the island. Perhaps the natives hadn’t anticipated the surprise arrival of dozens of mainlanders, but at the very least, they should have stopped such development from taking place. They should have barred the newcomers from the island, should have driven them off with brute force. But they didn’t, so the Elder had to take action, and now the mainlanders were being slaughtered.

The Elder paid no heed to the screams of the dying coming from the jungle, nor the sound of the roaring of his soldiers and the hissing of the Clickers as they rampaged farther inland. His attention was wholly centered on the natives, who were gathering quickly. Over a dozen had emerged, and they stood in a rough semi-circle, their eyes wide with fright.

One of them stepped forward, clearly afraid. He was dressed in a long pair of shorts and nothing else. His face was weathered, skin wrinkled and hard as a walnut. His hair was black with flecks of gray. He raised his hands in a placating motion and began to speak, the words spilling out of him quickly in his native tongue, which the Elder understood. “Oh, esteemed one! Please, forgive us! These scientists, they have forced themselves onto our land! They have wreaked havoc on all that is holy and worthy while we have cowered before them, knowing they are unworthy of being in the mere presence of Dagon! But we had no choice…they threatened us with much violence, with much bloodshed, if we did not—”

The Elder bellowed in a language that was universal to both their kind:
Silence!

A huge flock of birds took flight from the trees that bordered the beach, heading inland. The Elder sensed the flight of other creatures fleeing through the jungle but paid them no heed. His attention was wholly centered on the native, who stood cowering before him.

The Elder flicked his forked tongue out, tasting the air. There was a strong scent of acidy urine in the air along with a strong current of fear.

When The Elder spoke it was through a series of grunts and clicking noises that came from deep within its throat.

The humans they had slaughtered would not have understood what he was saying, but the natives did because they shared a common language. Their language was old when Atlantis was young, was ancient when the natives first reached this island.
“You are not truthful when you say that these newcomers threatened you with violence. I can smell the lie on you. It oozes from your very pores. Our kind has allowed you to live on this island since you climbed down from the trees. You have served as guardians. Some of you have served as sacrifices. You have done this in accordance with that which is written on the clay tablets of R’lyeh. In return, we have given you the gift your people crave more than anything: your miserable, wretched lives. And what do you show for your gratitude?
”

The native shook his head, his fear palpable. His fellow natives were backing away. They appeared ready to bolt. “Please, oh esteemed one!” the native said again, his voice pleading. “You are our Masters! We are here to serve you! Tell us how we may redeem ourselves! We will do anything you ask! We throw ourselves at your mercy!”

“
Mercy?
” the Elder barked. If the Elder had the vocal capabilities for laughter, it would have laughed long and hard at this foolish human. “
You have the audacity to ask for mercy? After allowing these humans to defile the holy site of Dagon with their presence? You know all too well what these mainlanders have done to our kind in the recent past. They tried to exterminate our race. Yet you welcomed them.
”

The native trembled. Sweat poured down his brow. He was practically stuttering as he attempted to placate the Dark One a final time. “There were too many of them, my Lord. We tried to chase them off the island, but to no avail! They have walked all over us, they have not given us the respect we have demanded of them.”

“Respect?”

“We told them that out of respect for our ways and our god that they were to leave this island. When they refused, we threatened them with death.”

“
And you did not carry out your threats?
”

“Wanabi warned us against it,” the native said. “He said that if we did, then even more mainlanders would arrive, and that they would capture us and try us according to their laws, and that the island would never be free of them again. So we watched. The mainlanders called more of their kind to Naranu. We tried to warn them again—”

“
You didn’t try hard enough. And I’ve had enough of your excuses!
”

“Please, oh Father! We ask for your mercy. I will gladly give my life to you…in return of…”

“
Oh, I will have your life
,” the Elder snarled. It stepped forward, pointing a taloned finger at the native. “
I will have your life, as well as the lives of the rest of your pathetic tribe
.”

The Elder roared to his soldiers. “
Ia! Ia!
”

The Dark Ones charged the circle of natives, who barely had time to turn around in an effort to flee before they were set upon.

The Elder leaped on the tribal chief’s back and slammed one clawed fist into the back of his head. The chief’s eyes and brain matter flew out the front of his skull, splashing on the sandy beach with a wet splat before his body spun and hit the ground. The Elder straddled him and sank his teeth into the soft hollow of his throat as his generals chased down the tribe’s remaining members. He bathed in the hot spray of blood, relishing the feel of it against his scales.

The Elder let his rage take over. He was blinded by it. As he let the rage carry him on, his mind went back over millennia, to other times when they’d had to slaughter Naranuans for similar offenses against Dagon. It was one thing to kill most of the tribe, leaving a few behind to repopulate the island; today, the Elder was bent on eliminating the tribe entirely—punishment for them allowing intruders here on this holiest of sites just as the stars were right to summon Dagon.

The Elder stopped mutilating the body of the tribal chief and leaped after the remaining, fleeing humans, joining his generals in the hunt. The rest of the tribe had not gotten very far. Most of them were already dead, lying in pools of blood, their sightless eyes staring up at a star-filled sky. Two of the generals were tugging at either end of a native as the man screamed. The skin of the man’s abdomen stretched, grew taut, then snapped, spilling wet entrails and blood on the beach with a great splash. The generals picked each piece up and began to devour the remains. The smells of blood and death and shit were heavy in the air as the last vestiges of the natives were similarly killed.

The Elder approached one of his generals, who was cornering one of the surviving humans against the edge of the jungle. The survivor was a young man, no older than sixteen. The boy’s face was smeared with ochre, his body nude save for a loincloth fashioned from vines and leaves. His hands were stained red with blood. The boy had given